Domestic Help

By Lucy Kaylin

Published: September 23, 2007

THE movie version of ''The Nanny Diaries,'' which opened last month, is full of witty little touches, like the red neon umbrella affixed to a building in downtown New York that suddenly morphs into a real one, the type Mary Poppins might hold aloft. And yet what makes the movie pleasantly diverting is also what makes it a sham. The vast majority of us who employ nannies simply aren't guilty of the status-choked buffoonery and neglect that provide the film its jokes.

Indeed, the mom (played by Laura Linney) who hires a pair of rarefied French mimes to be the entertainment at her little boy's birthday party just isn't typical. Nor is her put-upon nanny, a lusciously diffident college graduate played by Scarlett Johansson who doesn't come from money but nonetheless sees this job as a lark -- a temporary gig, akin to backpacking across Europe for a summer.

Meanwhile, the real nannies, particularly those in New York City and the metropolitan area, tend to come from difficult circumstances in the Caribbean, the Philippines, Central and South America and Africa. Some have been chased here by wars and economic collapse. Often they are middle-aged, having left their own children a decade ago or more, providing for them by caring for others and sending part of their modest earnings back home.

Unlike the cinematic nanny whose woes are regularly soothed by a doting young man who conveniently lives in her employers' building, many New York nannies go it alone, their marriages early casualties of the distance and upheaval. Their lives are not the sexy stuff of Hollywood movies. And yet the issue of how household workers are treated in this country is increasingly becoming a heated one.

Historically, domestic workers (a designation that includes housekeepers and people who care for the elderly, as well as those who look after young children) have been notably excluded from federal and state labor protections. The rationale is that this is an informal arrangement, and a private home with a minimal number of employees doesn't qualify as a workplace, subject to enforceable regulations. As such, household employers have never been bound by law to provide proper compensation, vacation and severance. They have been bound only by their conscience.

Backed by the grass-roots advocacy group Domestic Workers United, as well as Assemblyman Keith Wright, a Manhattan Democrat who is the grandson of domestic workers, a bill of rights has recently come before the state Legislature. The bill's provisions include five paid personal days for the state's 200,000 domestic workers, as well as five paid sick days, nine paid holidays, at least one day off a week, four weeks of vacation after five years of service, 21 days notice before termination, and severance. This is the third time since 2004 that the bill has been introduced, and the first time it has made significant progress in the State Senate and Assembly, clearing the labor committee last June.

Given that nannies perform what, for many of us, is the most important job in the world, it seems odd that doing right by them in society as a whole -- that is, making sure that they are comfortable, well compensated and respected -- has been so difficult. Surely that has much to do with the very private, idiosyncratic nature of the work: How do you regulate a job that is so much about tickles and burps and dirty diapers and hugs?

But it also owes to the widespread ambivalence we feel about turning over the care of our offspring to a stranger while we go off to earn and schmooze and fly to Dallas for a company party. The relationships, even the best of them, are fraught; denial is rampant. At bottom, to acknowledge domestic workers as a labor force with demands, rights and recourse means accepting the degree to which you have outsourced the care of your child.

The best way to cope? I'd argue for coming clean.

If you've hired a nanny, embrace that fact. Treat her like a valued employee and pay her on the books -- that is, pay your portion of her Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment and disability taxes. And help her gain protections and the attendant sense of self-respect by supporting the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Any parent knows how grueling an unremitting day, week or year with a toddler can be; don't support the fiction that this is somehow not real work.

And if you are still undecided, think about the picturesque conclusion of ''The Nanny Diaries,'' as our heroine dines on a city rooftop with her ''Harvard hottie,'' having turned her back on child care while preparing to embark on a post-graduate anthropology program. The real nannies aren't likely to have that chance -- but there is still a chance that they can finish out their careers without feeling that they've been had.